So I finally got around to getting Ubuntu 8.04 installed on my desktop at work…which means my Windows XP working area is being moved into a Windows 2000 SP4 VM.  At least until we stop using SourceSafe.

There were some issues with getting it up and running though, mostly hardware-related.

ATI Radeon X1550 DualHead card - This was a pain in the ass to get set up in Ubuntu…primarily because it’s a PCI card running off a PCI-E bus and has some memory ranges molestered by the BIOS on my Dell.  Basically, it still shows 2 Intel 915 cards (.0 and .1; the .1 doesn’t really exist, it’s just a memory area for a second head on the card that’s not there) and 2 ATI cards (again, .0 and .1).  Ubuntu seemed to have detected everything OK, using the fglrx driver for the Radeon cards, but the displayconfig-gtk tool is hosed beyond comprehension and couldn’t sort its ass from a hole in the ground.  Don’t use it.  Anyway, Ubuntu does something really, really, stupid here…it turns on Beryl/XGL/Compiz/whatever they call it these days and sets the default BPP in xorg.conf to 8; a resolution that is unsupported by the fglrx driver; not that you’d ever figure that out, since gdm decides to init a failsafe X config and totally clobber your X11 logs.  After manually molestering the xorg.conf and getting fglrx-control package (for my catalyst control panel) I finally got the fual monitors set up correctly.

Here’s my xorg.conf, in case anyone else is doing battle with this card:

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier    “Generic Keyboard”
Driver        “kbd”
Option        “XkbRules”    “xorg”
Option        “XkbModel”    “pc105″
Option        “XkbLayout”    “us”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier    “Configured Mouse”
Driver        “mouse”
Option        “CorePointer”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier    “ATI1″
BusID        “PCI:5:0:0″
Driver        “fglrx”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier    “ATI2″
BusID        “PCI:5:0:1″
Driver        “fglrx”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier    “Configured Monitor”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier    “LCD1″
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier    “LCD2″
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier    “Screen1″
Monitor        “LCD1″
Device        “ATI1″
DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier    “Screen2″
Monitor        “LCD2″
Device        “ATI2″
DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier    “Default Screen”
Monitor        “Configured Monitor”
Device        “Configured Video Device”
DefaultDepth    24
SubSection “Display”
Virtual        2560 1024
Depth        32
EndSubSection

EndSection

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier    “Default Layout”
Screen        “Screen1″
Screen        “Screen2″ RightOf “Screen1″
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load        “dbe”
Load        “dri”
Load        “glx”
EndSection

So I was using the HTC official Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM on my Tilt…I went from a cooked Dutty’s ROM thinking it would be less buggy.

Well, it was.  The other problem was it was just too fucking slow.  I got used to the speed of cooked ROMs, so I went back.  Unable to find a newer Dutty cooked ROM that wasn’t recalled for being buggy (at least he’s upfront about it) I went with one of Laurentius26’s Kaiser/Diamond hybrid ROMs.  This thing is fast and stable so far…

I had to disable the large start menu though…irritating as hell, but you can turn it off from the Settings/TouchFLO control panel.  Now to figure out how to make my menu text smaller.  I really think Laurentius26 over at xda-devs must have bad eyesight or something.  Gyah.

On another note, this is starting to look like a good day: everything I’m working on is in subversion, so I don’t need to bend over for sourcesafe at all.  w00t.

I’ve been fighting with this one for about 2 days…I think the latest trunk version of enigmail, combined with using an LDAP phonebook at work is to blame.

I think I fixed it by setting the key selection to manual in the enigmail configuration, rather than having it try to find the key based upon the recipient email address.

So I’ve been having this bug lately with Oracle SQL Developer…

It started because the SQL Studio that comes with SQL Server 2005 *blows*.  It appears to be written in managed code, is a memory hog, and is slow as frozen dog shit.  So, given that I had been doing some oracle stuff and had SQL Developer sitting on my system, I decided to use that.  For awhile, all was good, and right with the world.

Then some ass in IT decided to move all of our dev databases from servername to servername\servername2005.  I tried to go in and reconfigure my servers in SQL Developer only to find that there was no way to specify the instance name for SQL Server connections using the jtds driver.

I googled this, and found a workaround which was to use 1433;instance=instancename in the port box.  This allowed me to connect, but most of the tables were missing.  So I went back to using SQL server’s shitty utility to get my work done.

I fired up SQL Developer again today to get some oracle work done and it had an update for the jtds driver, so I decided to give it a try again.  Still nothing, but I was renewed in my search for a solution.  I finally found one…instead of 1433;instance=instancename in the port box, I used 1433/databasename;instance=instancename in there.  Now all my tables show up just fine.

Sanity once again restored.

So I brought my Logitech MX1000 mouse into work because the MX700 that goes with my keyboard won’t hold a charge anymore, and won’t recharge because the contacts on the bottom that recharge it are corroded too much. Works great at home…I’ll get more use out of it here though.

So anyway, it works great at home, but it jumps all over the screen like crazy here…why it works it home I have no idea, but it does. So I google for a solution, and apparently the only thing to do is to call Logitech for a RMA. So I did, and they’re gonna send me out a brand new Logitech Revolution mouse since the MX1000 is discontinued. I should have it in 7-10 business days.

Pretty cool, eh? This is why I stick with logitech.

So my girlfriend has one of these clocks. Problem is that she doesn’t have the instructions, and can’t remember what they said since they were written in Japanese. So I tinkered with it with a little bit of help from the web and a little bit of problem solving. Here’s the basic rundown of it:

1. Hold down the reset button on the back for a few seconds to reset the clock (or take the batteries out)
2. Hold down the E-Time button to set earth time. The first thing you need to set is the offset from JST. In my case it was something like -16. This affects the Vana’diel time calculation, so it’s fairly importat
3. The rest of them function like any clock set you’ve done in your life. Just use the up/down buttons to change the value, and the “Set” button to move to the next field.
4. To set the four alarms, hold down their buttons for a few seconds. It will ask if it’s a countdown or a time timer, select that, and use the “Set” button to set the rest of the data it needs.

You don’t need to set the Vana’diel time, moon phases, almanac, or anything in that area…it’s all derived from the earth time and offset from JST that you set. I’m sure there are more features that I have no idea this clock has, and if I ever get a email back from Hori with a PDF of the instruction sheet or something I’ll update this post with better instructions.

Mostly I’m posting this because if I had found it I would have saved a few hours of work, so maybe I can help someone else out. Also, I don’t want to lose it

So I’ve been having this problem for about a year now…I want to connect to my work’s VSS database from home, so I can work without remote desktop. I don’t like the idea of remote desktop from home, because when more than 2 people are remote desktop connected to their machines, there isn’t enough upstream bandwidth to support them. Big pain in the ass, but anyway. So my plan was to just connect to vss from home, and work disconnected, using my development environment at home. The problem was, whenever I went to connect to VSS, I would get authentication errors. Now, I was VPN’d into my work net, I was able to browse \\vssserver\vssshare just fine, but VSS would not log on.

So, since I plan to get some work done over the holiday weekend (yeah, I have no life, I know) and don’t want to drive half an hour into work to fix connection issues, I gave the problem more thought. I tried to see if it was a filesystem issue; I set up a vss repo on my dev box at work and connected to it from home. The problem still occurred, so it’s not a filesystem issue; I’m an admin on my box. So I went into vss manager and manually created a user that did not exist on my domain or machine and set it up. Worked fine. So, long story short, just create a new user that isn’t attached to your domain or computer via windows authentication.